The high amount of stress in daily life is caused by increased demands on our time. Persons in the work force are being asked to produce more in a shorter amount of time, family activities are heavily scheduled, and the amount of electronic stimuli to which persons in developed countries are exposed has grown exponentially in the last several decades. The intensity to accomplish more in less time is the basic component for stress in daily life. Stress causes the brain to tighten; oxygen is utilized from the blood more slowly, and brain functioning and processing slows. In general, stress causes reduced efficiency of the brain power required to accomplish cognitive functioning.
There are a great number of activities known to help reduce stress—breathing exercises, regular physical exercise, meditation, yoga, and others. However, these activities are for the purpose of reducing stress after it has already manifested, rather than preventing stress from having such a damaging affect on optimized brain functioning. Stress affects a person as if the individual who has stress is a container and stress is a substance that is poured into it. The stress-reducing activities help “pour out” the stress from the container, or person. These activities are helpful as responses to an over-full container. They are not helpful to reduce the container from getting full in the first place. These activities empty the container rather than prevent it from being filled—they are prescriptive rather than preventative. And, after the person is affected by stress to a significant degree, the person then experiences decreased cognitive functioning, which often then causes even greater stress, with the result that the container gets more stress poured into it. This merry-go-round effect leads the stress spiral to poorer and less efficient cognitive performance. Additionally, those stress reducing methods do not condition the brain so that the brain is aware that the stress response to certain stimuli is unhelpful to its optimized functioning.
Brain activity creates electromagnetic energy—captured and observed as brainwaves with EEG amplifiers and computers—which indicate how the brain is functioning. Brain activity is based on neurons which interact and connect with each other to form groups known as “neuro-nets”. These neuro-nets are activated based on stimuli. As a consequence, when a certain stimulus is experienced—like a mouse jumping out from behind a counter—we have a brief moment of fear and jump back. This occurs because neuro-nets were activated that created a pathway for us to jump, for our hearts to race a bit, and possibly for us to utter a noise in response to such stimulus.
Neurofeedback, which exposes a person to sound waves at certain predetermined frequencies, has also been used to deal with brain functioning. For example, one neurofeedback method is based on a Quantitative Electroencephalographic Analysis (QEEG). Using a QEEG, the neurofeedback provider compares the brainwaves of the client to a normative data base of other brainwaves. Following such comparison, irregularities are noted for neurofeedback training. A significant problem with a QEEG, however, is the basic assumption that the database of brainwaves is helpful to establish a normal or healthy brainwave pattern for all individuals. This is not always so.
The present invention provides a method for affecting balanced brain activity that is individualized, in order to more effectively condition the particular subject's brain while it is working to be optimized for cognitive functioning. During the process of balancing the brain's activity (returning the brain to homeostatic conditions), an outside stimulus, such as ambient sound, is played for the subject to hear. The subject's brain develops a relationship between the process of bringing the brain to a balanced state and the outside stimulus. Because the brain remembers this relationship, balanced brain functioning may then later be affected by exposing the subject to the exact same outside stimulus.